Ethics or (doing what we do)

Up at the top of this blog has appeared a new little grey box. Right there, next to Home. See it? Today I’m going to introduce you to it – readers, meet ‘Ethics’. Mine.

I’ve been thinking about all of these words I’ve put into this blog, into my comments on other people’s blogs, about which blogs I read and return to again, and again, and again.

What inspires all of this? What am I looking for?

Hope for the future. That’s what it is all about for me.
When I meet/see/do/participate/read/write about actions and people who care for each other as people, who help each other be our best selves – who show each other how we can care for each other.

Who don’t put up with the opposite.
Who stand by their beliefs no matter what.
Who write about them, talk about them
live them.
(caring is biological)

It gives me hope for a future with more caring than we have now.
It gives me hope that our children can learn a curriculum of humanity before and behind any other.

Words are powerful things for me. Once said or read they resonate in me. So I prefer to read and say ones that push toward our best selves. Our ever changing best selves.

So I adapted and absorbed and hold before you my statement on ethics. Read my blog, participate, come visit my classroom (for real) to see more. Read the links above and in my blogroll to see even more.

4 comments

respond

Let me preface some random thoughts by thanking you for your work here. You open yourself so wide that the “self” part dissolves into something larger (community? love?). While reading your blog, the image of fog nets used to catch water on mountains in Chile drifted into my thoughts. I do not know if you are the water or the nets–maybe it’s the process itself. You leave yourself exposed, and that is a strength.

Thanks for mentioning me in the post—I spent a good chunk of my youth studying biology and ethics, and cured any pretensions to academia when I butchered a thesis developing biological basis for rule utilitarianism. What took me months to fail you successfully summarize in 3 words– “caring is biological.”

“I do not barter my words or my silence. ”
This is the crux, words to live by both here on the screen as well as out under the sun. This is far more difficult to follow than a lot of folks realize—it requires a blazing flame of self-awareness, and most of us prefer vicarious fire (and like voyeurs we gravitate to sites such as yours who put into practice what the rest of us would rather just preach).

And now to your question: “What are you looking for?”
In the classroom, I am looking for children to ask themselves this very question: What are you looking for? It’s why I push for kids to think beyond imagined limits, and why I try to keep my opinions out of the room.

I am not sure I can answer this question directly, but I will tell you that I am closer to it when I am sitting at a pond’s edge at dusk watching lightning bugs attracted to their own reflected light than when I am in my cortex, trying to approach this rationally.

I also closer to it when looking at the photo “morning hug”–a wonderful vision of an idea betrayed by my clumsy attempt at words.

mike

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong — or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying “this is where I stand.”
I want to know if you know how to melt
Into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing
To live day by day
With the consequence of love
And the bitter unwanted passion
Of your sure defeat.
I have been told
In that fierce embrace
Even the gods
Speak of God.